'Self-Eating' Cells and the Future of Medicine

I am delighted that Yoshinori Ohsumi won this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. His pioneering work in yeast led to the discovery of genes and biological processes that are needed for autophagy. Autophagy (from the Greek for "self-eating") is the mechanism by which cells break down and recycle cellular content. Without this vital housekeeping role we'd be more prone to cancer, Parkinson's and other age-related disorders. Although scientists have been aware of autophagy sinc